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Move Over E.T., a new Cute Alien steals Hearts in Earth To Echo.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

An inspiring
science-fiction adventure, Earth to Echo captures all the
mystery, excitement and wonder of an extraterrestrial occurrencein a small Nevada suburb. But at its heart, the movie is about
friendship. Our three young heroes – Tuck,
Munch and Alex – are a closely bonded trio of outcasts, whose time together
is coming to an end. Their neighborhood
is being destroyed by a highway construction project; forcing their families to
move away. Only the promise of one last
thrill together – a journey into the desert to search for the source of strange
and mysterious messages that have appeared on their cell phones –can distract them from their impending move. “The
movie is really about this group of kids and how they have to say goodbye to
each other,” says directorDave
Green. “There’s something
bittersweet about the fact they’re spending their last night together. But is goodbye really goodbye? In our movie, it’s not. It’s a beginning.”

Earth to Echoall began with the seed of an idea from producer Andrew
Panay. Panay wanted to recapture the spirit of seminal family
movies from the 1980s that he loved as a child – E.T., The Goonies, Stand By Me – movies that managed to conjure the
wonder and heartbreak of early adolescence and infuse it with an intoxicating
sense of adventure. If the story of E.T. were to happen today, he asked
himself, how would it be told?

With video recording technology becoming
increasingly accessible to all ages, especially kids, the movie’s concept
seemed to fit perfectly into today’s world. “Kids
today are doing a lot of their own filming and they're videotaping and
Vine-ing. There are all these different
social media outlets and ways of communicating which comes down to turning the
camera around and shooting yourself and sending it off. It just makes sense,” says Panay. Today,
kids want to share their experiences with people. Fortunately enough, this
group of friends brings viewers into their story with the click of the “Record”
button. With its roots in the found footage genre, Earth to Echo is the
next step in storytelling.

Instead
of approaching seasoned feature directors to help develop the project, Panay
decided to go in another direction. The heart of the movie lies in the way the
characters piece together the story themselves using their own cameras,
editing, and insight. This was exactly what Panay wanted from a director.“I
wanted to find a young filmmaker from the generation that sits and edits their
films themselves,” says Panay.

He
found what he was looking for in Dave Green, an enterprising filmmaker with a
unique vision and strong résumé. Aside
from having been a producer’s assistant on the set of the Spiderman trilogy, films acclaimed
for their stunning visual effects, Dave also had a series of polished short
films and music videos under his belt. When Panay watched one of Green’s
shorts, he was immediately convinced. “It
was practically a trailer for Earth to
Echo,” he says. “After seeing that,
I had no doubts at all.”

Green
met with Panay to discuss his idea and the two immediately hit it off, saying
that “[Panay]’s idea just sparked my excitement.”

According
to Green, Panay’s idea was already in the family of concepts Green had been
discussing with his writing partner, Henry
Gayden; but Gayden wasn’t convinced.
“At first, I didn’t know what to
do,” Gayden admits. “It was too broad a
container. But then I got this idea and
started writing and by two in the morning, I had a rough story.” Gayden called up Green the next morning and
said he had landed on something interesting.

As
the next step, Green shot a one-minute clip to help sell the fun, the mystery,
and the suspense of what Earth to Echo would ultimately
become. When Panay saw it, he was immediately convinced. “It was
practically a trailer for Earth to Echo,”
he says. “After seeing that, I had no doubts at all.

From the beginning, Green wanted to approach
things differently with Earth to Echo. In this case, the material isn’t simply raw
footage, it’s a finished video created by Tuck (played by Brian ‘Astro’ Bradley), an avid, DIY filmmaker who regularly posts
his videos on YouTube. “We wanted to lean into the idea that Tuck not
only shot the whole thing, he’s also cut the whole thing, and he’s put music to
it when he feels like it’s necessary, and he’s put titles in there, and he can
pause the movie, and he can interject,” says Green.

If an extraterrestrial occurrence actually
happened today, almost anyone would be able to capture it with the amount of
video recording technology at people’s fingertips. Green also found a
compelling advantage to creating a story that hewed solely to his main
characters’ point of view, an attribute of many of his favorite movies from the
likes of Spielberg and Hitchcock. “You build suspense out of what the
characters don’t see and don’t know,” he explains. “And that’s the most exciting part. It’s fun to parse out information, just one
seed at a time.”